Basilisk

Every knight the Order of the Iron Thorn sends up Sarn Tor climbs to make his reputation on the Basilisk’s corpse, and every one of them meets her eyes afraid. Fear is the one thing her curse was built to feed on, so every one of them dies, and every death makes the Order richer and the woman on the mountain more alone. Her name was Vasira once. Six years ago she had a garden and a family and a future, until the realm decided it needed a monster and chose the girl no one was left to come looking for.

Then the Order sends Emrys. Its finest blade, the Hound, the man who does not miss and does not flinch and, it turns out, does not fear her. He climbs Sarn Tor to end her and instead takes her bare hand in his and lives, and something in the curse that has held her for six years comes quietly, terrifyingly loose.

The men who made her never wrote down the one flaw they could not forge without. A curse like hers has a seam in it, sealed against the single thing they were certain would never find her: to be wanted, without fear, by someone who knows exactly what she is. The Order built a monster to sell the realm protection from her. They are about to learn what a monster does when she is loved instead, and what Vasira has finally understood after six years in the dark. The deadliest thing on this mountain was never the woman they cursed. It was the man who cursed her.

Basilisk is a standalone dark monster romantasy with a guaranteed happily-ever-after. For adult readers.